Been bitten by a Black Widow - once. I envy you. I grew up in the Orange Groves in Mesa, Arizona and have been hit by a wasp twice, bark scorpions plenty of times (10+?), and a black widow once. The widow was, by far, the worst.

I don't remember being bit, but I had just gone to sleep when I first noticed what felt like a gunshot wound in my upper left thigh. We figure I was probably sitting on a chair when it got me because the bite was right where your legs hang over a chair. Then there was the headache like my brain was in a vice, the constant vomiting, feeling like my guts were being twisted every which way. Definitely would not recommend.

I live in one of the areas (Riverside County) currently under investigation by a University of California, Riverside study. My backyard used to be a haven for spiders and lizards and such, and in the past three years I have noticed a huge lack of black widow spiders.

As a kid, I would go out and kill them before they reached the large birdhouse we had in our backyard, and then one day I noticed the spider was different. Within the next few months, I realized that there were no longer any black widow spiders in my backyard, instead, I kept finding a lightish-brown spider with the same hourglass shape. After going on the internet and finding out about the UCR study, I caught one in a plastic bag and examined it. Sure enough, it matched the description of a brown widow.

The point of this is that even though I would kill the spiders, there would always be more to kill later on. Suddenly, there were no more black widows in my entire backyard, and only these brown widows in more selective spots than where I would find the more dangerous ones.

I'm in San Bernardino County, but come to think of it, I haven't had to kill a black widow in a while. I would make sure to kill them whenever I came across them because my nieces play at my house all the time, but the last time I had to kill one was probably 4 months ago.

Although I haven't done a perimeter sweep in a while. If I took the time to look under awnings again for these things, I might come across a few.

I'm in LA, and I've seen countless brown widows in my back yard, and when picking up logs around the city for my woodworking hobby. I've only ever seen one actual black widow. I accidentally put my hand right on it while trying to pick up a log, and was all "What is that?" I lifted my hand, saw it on the log, then spent a minute running around in a circle yelling "OMGOMGOMGOMG."

Heh, I remember clearly the scariest encounter I ever had with a black widow. I was at a friend's house a few blocks away from my own, and his yard attracted about as many spiders as mine (except his had potato bugs and such in it too). We found a black widow and attempted to shoot it with a Super-Soaker, only to have the water pressure blast the spider right back at us. We stood there for a few seconds wondering where the heck it went, when I feel something on my sleeve. I lift my arm up, spot the black widow starting to enter my left sleeve, and start flailing LIKE FUCKING CRAZY. The spider must've fallen off of me, and I never wore that shirt again.

A while back I was walking out of a building and came face to face with a Black Widow just strolling down the sidewalk in my direction. Instantly all common sense left my head and I was faced with hastily assembled ideas. This resulted in me thinking if I stepped on it its body would stab through my shoe and seep into the insert, transfer to the sock, soak into my skin, and kill me.

i don't know why but every time i am tasked with killing a spider i always think something similar to this like "the fangs will pierce straight through the newspaper and into my eyes and I will surely die."

In Florida, these spiders are moving from home to home via vehicles. The campgrounds at all of the state parks are loaded with them. Just look for the distinctive egg sack under the picnic tables. When they get to your home their population explodes, as noted in the article. Once they become established you can expect to find way more nests of these poisonous spiders under your benches and deck chairs, and in your garage than you would ever expect to fink black widows.

The real story with these spiders is not so much they are bad news for the black widow, it's that your chance of actually encountering poisonous widow spiders has greatly increased. And these ones don't just occur sometimes they create infestations of the poisonous spiders. It's not a good thing. The only good news here is that brown widows are somewhat less aggressive than black widows. Still, I have nightmares about these spiders because they are absolutely everywhere. I have to hunt my yard several times each summer to be sure my doorways and kids shoes are not harboring brown widow nests.

Not nearly as much as people lead on. If you have a good immune system, you'll end up with some abdominal cramps, malaise, muscle pain, etc. It's if you're compromised or young/elderly that you need to worry.

i was bit 3 times by a brown recluse. Luckily I wasn't allergic to them or it would've been a bad time, but the damn bites were there for a week and I thought I was going to lose my neck, luckily puss subsided and i continued on my merry way.

Their danger has been greatly exaggerated. Their venom is very toxic, but the amount they deliver in a bite is very, very tiny. For an adult, the risk of death from a bite is significantly less than one percent, and that's without treatment.

There are actually no spiders on earth that are inherently (mortally) dangerous for their venom.

Some spiders can make you ill, and many of them cause a significant amount of pain, but no spider will kill you with its' venom unless you are unusually sensitive to it (for example if you are allergic).

Even the spiders in australia, with their famously potent and painful bites, have killed far fewer people than bees and wasps.

There is an arachnologist who maintains a website that makes a concerted effort to correct several common misconceptions people have about spiders. He makes an effort to counteract arachnophobia with a sobering look at how non-deadly they really are.

Brown recluses want nothing to do with you. If you're in a recluse-prone area just be sure to check dark, low-traffic areas (old blankets, closets, anything a little spider would like to hide), shake out the blankets and clothes, etc. They're not aggressive and only bite when they feel threatened (ie there's a recluse living in an old shirt you haven't worn for months; you put the shirt on, pressing the spider against your skin, it gets scared and bites). Most bites are weak or "dry", meaning not a full dose of venom is given.

Despite all of this, if you fear you have been bitten by a medically significant spider (FEMALE Black Widow or a Recluse Spider), seek medical attention immediately. Better safe than sorry. The venom generally won't kill you but complications from a dirty necrotic bite could mess you up.

I think you are making an unwarranted assumption that there is a single monolithic reason for conservation.

Some may instead argue, for example, that the purpose of conservation is to make life better for human beings. In 99% of cases this would involve saving more species for the long-term benefit of mankind. However, there may be species so noxious that humanity would be better off if they were gone, for example, smallpox.

So instead of allowing a spider to out-compete the black widow naturally, as they've evolved to do so, we just crush the brown widows relentlessly and re-release black widows back into the environment to artificially inflate their population. Yaaaay conservation.

It's okay, I fucking hate pandas, too. We made them goddamn porn and they still won't fuck. I went to the national zoo, and they were all trying to hide behind leaves, and I wanted to grab one of those mother fuckers and yell "HEY YOU BAMBOO-EATING MOTHER FUCKER, YOUR PATHETIC BIANNUALLY MENSTRUATING SPECIES IS ONLY ALIVE BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE TO LOOK AT YOU, SO GET THE FUCK OUT THERE AND BE CUTE! DANCE OR BALANCE A BALL ON YOUR NOSE OR SOME SHIT! FUCK YOU!"

Well...I think the big problem is labeling things "native" and "invasive" so rigidly. Everything is an invasive species arguably. One can argue "well I mean...invasive...as in new since I was a kid...", but when spelled out that way it sounds pretty stupid.

There is no "stable" or "natural" order to nature. For an obvious example...all mammals are invasive species compared to most of earth's nature. So, let's kill all people and bring back the dinosaurs! Then, kill the dinosaurs and bring back the...etc.

So to arbitrarily say "invasive" species are bad, means that quite literally, everything since the first lifeform on earth, has been bad.

Well first off define "bad." Invasive species change environments. Sometimes their competition can drive other species to extinction but at the same time the invasive species is thriving. Personally I prefer biodiversity but Earth doesn't really care so it isn't really bad for the environment. It just changes it.

Sometimes the change isn't even that drastic and it definitely isn't in this case. The brown widows are slowly overtaking black ones in certain areas. The black widow is still safe, it's still dominant in rural areas, but it's less common now in urban places. And seeing how these spiders are closely related and very similar this really doesn't have an effect on the rest of the environment. The only difference is that we humans are safer for it, which should always be a high priority for us. I wouldn't say we should have a mass genocide of black widows to wipe them out but why should we interfere with the ecosystem to make things more dangerous for us?

Also his claim that brown widows don't belong there is dumb, the environment changes and it's not like the brown widows were newly introduced. Why should he decide what does and doesn't belong?

The black widow is still safe, it's still dominant in rural areas, but it's less common now in urban places. And seeing how these spiders are closely related and very similar this really doesn't have an effect on the rest of the environment.

Absolutely not. Chimps and humans are VERY closely related, but we exhibit hugely different behaviors in certain cases.

By having one species rapidly replace another one, it can disrupt the environment tremendously. This is hypothetical, but imagine that the Brown Widow makes its webs at the top of your room and the black widow makes its webs lower down. Now because the Black widow has been displaced, ground crawling bugs bloom, but flying bugs decrease in population. Frogs now have more to eat, but birds have less. So there are more frogs and less birds, but, wait a minute, the frogs overpopulate in a few years so the snake and hawk population spikes, causing the insectivorous bird population to drop even further. The frogs eat the little bait fish, so the big fish have to eat more frogs. The frog population drops, but there are no little fish for the big fish to eat, so the big fish begin to die,too. The snake and hawk population pushes down the rodent, reptile, and fish population even more. Now, hawks also eat snakes which puts even more pressure on the rodent, reptile, and fish populations. All that because of a small change in behavior between two species.

Also his claim that brown widows don't belong there is dumb, the environment changes and it's not like the brown widows were newly introduced.

They were introduced in the 1930's according to the article.

Honesty, I would suggest that you learn about what it is you're going to comment on next time. You shouldn't call an expert in a field dumb, if you don't even know that related species can exhibit greatly different behaviors. Have you ever heard of Darwin's finches? They all all evolved from a common ancestor, but their beak shapes changed in order to accommodate new preferred food types. These closely related species are behaviorally and physiologically distinct from one another.

Were brown widows introduced to the area by humans, or are they just taking over naturally? If it's the latter, then intervening to stop them is upsetting the natural order of things. It's like with pandas. Pandas are going extinct for reasons having nothing to do with humans, and without human intervention, they would be extinct already. We can try to preserve the species in zoos and the like, but we should stop wasting resources trying to repopulate the wild population when nature is telling us loud and clear that the pandas just don't have what it takes to survive.

I live along the coast in So Cal and we have a really large black widow population, they are everywhere. I have certainly noticed that over the last few years we have a lot more smaller and less black spiders. I thought that some younger black widows were simply not always as black as mature ones, but I guess they are just a different spider.

G. B. Edwards, a University of Florida arachnologist, claims brown widow venom is twice as potent as black widow
venom, but is usually confined to the bite area and surrounding tissue, as opposed to the black widow's.

I work in the pest control field in Florida and brown and black widows are everywhere, in my research brown widows are always said to be the more potent. We even had a discourse at my most recent continuing education class.

I've been bitten by a brown widow, It hurt like a motherfucker, but I was out of the ER in 3 or so hours, and after the swelling went down it was okay, until the staph infection. That staff infection made me just a little bit more of a man, let me tell you.

Vetter said the less-toxic bite of a brown widow is a good thing. But he says the black widow is native to the area and has evolved over tens of thousands of years with the other animals and plants in the region. Brown widows "don't belong here," he said.

As a scientist wouldn't you avoid deciding or theorizing what belongs where? If brown widows are becoming more successful in certain areas who's to say if they're more acclimated to those conditions now? Unless of course they're being brought in artificially from somewhere.

Same here. As an amateur ecologist I fail to see the immediate danger to the ecosystem. Do they fill a niche vital to the ecosystem? Check. Are they directly responsible for killing the native species? No, that's probably us being all sensitive to the whole "extremely painful, venomous bites" and all, otherwise they would have taken over before or a larger urban area. I understand that the native diversity going down is never a good thing, but I can think of at least 10 species invasions much worse than this and as long as the niche is being filled I don't see how the ecosystem could collapse.

Because we have no preinvasion census numbers, we cannot properly assess whether the brown widow has had a competitive effect on the western black widow population in southern California, however, anecdotally, arachnologists, naturalists, and home owners in the Los Angeles area have stated that black widow populations have decreased with the coincident appearance of the brown widow.

I don't think that's the whole story. Take a look at rattlesnakes. People who kill rattlesnakes for a living kill the loudest ones, leaving the silent or quieter ones behind to breed. The result is more deaths than before. If you kill the spiders you are able to spot and identify (for getting the right anti-venom) the most easily, what does that leave you? These brown widows may be less poisonous right now, but aren't they also less easy to identify?

Wow, that has to be an awkward job.
Knockknock
Census worker: Hello, spider? This is census taker. How many of you are there inside?
Spider: I ain't telling!
Census taker: Sigh, guess we will have to use average for this household based on surrounding houses.
"A new study by researchers at UC Riverside, Fullerton College and Humboldt State University found 20 times more brown widows in the Los Angeles Basin than black widows during a recent census."